Alphonse Daudet. I need not add more; the very names of these
"Immortals" suffice to commend the series to readers in all countries.

One word in conclusion: America may rest assured that her students of
international literature will find in this series of 'ouvrages couronnes'
all that they may wish to know of France at her own fireside--a knowledge
that too often escapes them, knowledge that embraces not only a faithful
picture of contemporary life in the French provinces, but a living and
exact description of French society in modern times. They may feel
certain that when they have read these romances, they will have sounded
the depths and penetrated into the hidden intimacies of France, not only
as she is, but as she would be known.

GASTON BOISSIER

SECRETAIRE PERPETUEL DE L'ACADEMIE FRANCAISE




GEORGES OHNET

The only French novelist whose books have a circulation approaching the
works of Daudet and of Zola is Georges Ohnet, a writer whose popularity
is as interesting as his stories, because it explains, though it does not
excuse, the contempt the Goncourts had for the favor of the great French
public, and also because it shows how the highest form of Romanticism
still ferments beneath the varnish of Naturalism in what is called genius
among the great masses of readers.